


Satisfice

by redwillawrites



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Cross-Generational Friendship, Dark Arts, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fan as Female Harry Potter, Female Friendship, Female Harry Potter, Fix-It of Sorts, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Horcrux Hunting, Male-Female Friendship, Modern Girl in Wizarding Word, Moral Ambiguity, No Smut, No character bashing, Older Man/Younger Woman, Older Mind in Younger Body, Original Female Character as Female Harry Potter - Freeform, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Ravenclaw Hermione Granger, Series Rewrite, Severus Snape Being a Bastard, Severus Snape Smokes, Slow Burn, Slytherin Harry Potter, Slytherin Politics, Slytherins Being Slytherins, Smart Harry, Spell Creation (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 09:47:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27468973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redwillawrites/pseuds/redwillawrites
Summary: “Most people fall somewhere in the middle. A person can maximize when it comes to some decisions, and satisfice on others.” – Elizabeth BernsteinWhen Trisha, an ordinary disillusioned twenty-something and die-hard Harry Potter fan, finds herself living as the protagonist of her beloved books, she must find a way to be true to herself without dooming her new world to disaster.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Severus Snape, Harry Potter/Severus Snape, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 50





	Satisfice

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Replacement](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12778563) by [esm3rald](https://archiveofourown.org/users/esm3rald/pseuds/esm3rald). 



> IMPORTANT
> 
> Before we start out I just want to give you all the lay of the land here with regard to the pairing. It is going to be a glacially slow burn. Even though Trisha has the mind and experiences of a twenty-five year old her physical brain and body are 11 and still growing. With that in mind until about 6th year this is truly a tale about the epic and unlikely friendship that develops between Severus and Trisha as they team up to defeat the Dark Lord and remove the horcrux before it's too late. 
> 
> Snape is still a bastard. There's still a student-teacher component to their relationship and their dynamic is not going to be particularly professional even before romance comes into it. In the interest of sensitivity to that dynamic (as well as themes like war, prejudice, racism etc.) the rating is mature but there is no smut/sexual content planned at this time. 
> 
> This fic's concept is heavily inspired by esm3rald's The Replacement, which is linked above - go check it out!
> 
> If this is all good for you please read on! Hope you enjoy!

It started abruptly. Without reason or warning.

One day Trisha fell into bed, exhausted after another long day at work, the next day she woke up in a cupboard.

If that weren’t strange enough, she found that she’d turned into a child.

A short, skinny child of about eleven with long dark hair and big green eyes and a lighting bolt scar on her forehead half-hidden by old-man specs and a long fringe.

In short, she’d turned into Harry Potter.

If Harry Potter had been a girl.

At first, she’d thought it was a dream. A particularly vivid dream featuring technicolour surround-sound, yeah, but a dream all the same.

But then she didn’t wake up.

She went to sleep in the cupboard at the end of the day as Trisha Potter and she woke up in the morning still in the cupboard. Still Trisha Potter.

It didn’t take long for her to switch from somewhat bemused play-acting to full-blown panic.

Something was clearly wrong with her, in her brain. Maybe she’d slipped in the shower and knocked herself into a coma. Maybe she’d died in her sleep and this was what the higher powers had decided would be her heaven. Maybe she was just crazy and what she saw wasn’t real.

But nothing she did dispelled the world of Privet Drive and no one else seemed to find it strange that she was there instead of a boy called Harry.

It was somewhat fortunate that Harry had never had any friends and most of the adults in his life paid little to know attention to him because if he’d had a supportive network of adults around him Trisha would surely have been committed to an institution.

As it was Petunia and Vernon Dursley were just pleased that ‘the girl’ would scrub floors without complaint and hadn’t had any ‘odd-turns’ in the last little while and as far as they were concerned life ticked on just as it always had.

After the fourth week of her time as Trisha Potter, Trisha had settled into a kind of a routine, a routine that was broken when she left her cupboard one morning to find the kitchen table of number four piled high with brightly wrapped parcels.

“Start the bacon,” Petunia snapped as she padded into the kitchen. “And don’t you dare let it burn! I want everything to be perfect for my Duddy’s special day!”

Trisha froze with the frying pan a half-inch above the cooktop.

Dudley’s birthday.

She scanned the presents.

There were thirty-seven presents, including a new computer, a second television and a sparsely wrapped twelve-speed racing bike.

It was Dudley Dursley’s eleventh birthday.

She couldn’t be totally sure of course, but it made a horrible kind of sense.

If a person was going to live as Harry Potter they should probably start their journey where Harry had started it. Learning that he was a parselmouth at the zoo.

Trisha set the pan down on the cooker and took out the fixings for breakfast on autopilot, flicking on the percolator for Vernon.

Chewing on her lower lip she wracked her brain, trying to remember if she’d dreamed anything in particular last night, such as a flying motorcycle or a flash of green light and a high cold voice.

If she had, she couldn’t remember it.

Which didn’t really matter considering she knew both what the dream would have been and what it would have meant to Harry Potter.

She sometimes wondered what had happened to him.

Was he even now getting ready to start her usual shift at the coffee shop? Was he enjoying being in his twenties and living in her flat, working her job, experiencing her very boring average life? Or did he exist at all?

She could never decide one way or the other, both worlds felt very real.

Vernon entered the kitchen just as she was flipping the bacon.

He barked: “Comb your hair!” in lieu of a greeting, and sat down in his usual place and opened his newspaper.

Trisha brought him his coffee and didn’t mention that she’d already wrestled her hair into a tidy bun that morning, since Vernon never really bothered to look at her and wouldn’t appreciate the ‘lip’.

The Dursleys were almost precisely as described.

Petunia was a skinny brunette with a thin mouth and an insistence on cleanliness that reminded Trisha of her own mother. She was one of those people who was always desperately unhappy but couldn’t put their finger on why even though they spent all their time comparing themselves to others.

Vernon was a big, beefy blond man with a taste for sweater vests and an admirable moustache. He cared very little about the world outside his comfort zone and would have preferred it if everyone else was like him.

Dudley was a typical eleven-year-old boy. All he wanted to do was snack and have screen time. He was fat and round-faced, a little dumb and a lot spoiled. Trisha couldn’t find it in herself to do anything but pity him. Which probably was more due to her having the mind of a woman in her mid-twenties instead of also being an eleven-year-old boy. Also, Dudley never hit or chased her. She wasn’t sure if this was because she was a girl or not but not once had he done anything worse than be spoiled and rude.

All the Dursleys were spoiled and rude really, but Trisha had been working in retail for long enough that it had ceased to be personal for her. And, after all, these weren’t _her_ relatives. These were the unfortunate roommates she was stuck with for the next six years or until she woke up from this odd life.

She was perfectly happy being neglected by the Dursleys, and the Dursleys were perfectly happy to neglect her so it all worked out rather well.

Trisha was about done frying the eggs when Dudley came in with his mother.

She set out the plates with the eggs and bacon and toast.

She refilled Vernon’s coffee and set out juice for Dudley.

She was about to ask Petunia if she wanted the kettle on for tea when Dudley finished counting out his tribute and his face fell.

“Thirty-six,” he said. “That’s two less than last year.”

“Darling, you haven’t counted Auntie Marge’s present,” Petunia said. “It’s under the big one from Mummy and Daddy here.”

“Thirty-seven then,” Dudley conceded, but his face was going red in the way that suggested he was about to throw a temper tantrum like the world’s least socialized three-year-old.

Petunia, who was as bad an enabler as Trisha had ever witnessed was quick to say: “And we’ll get you two new presents while we’re out today. You can pick them out yourself! How does that sound popkin?”

“I can pick whatever I want?” Dudley said.

“Anything you want, sweetums,” Petunia agreed, smoothing down some of her son’s thick blond hair.

“Alright then,” agreed Dudley in a longsuffering fashion, sitting down heavily in his usual place and reaching for the nearest parcel.

Trisha shook her head a bit. Sometimes living alongside the Dursleys was a little like watching reality television.

Trisha ate her breakfast quietly and watched as Dudley unwrapped his small mountain of gifts. He’d received so many new things that Trisha had no idea how he could possibly build up a desire for anything else before Christmas.

In the hall the phone rang and Petunia left to answer it.

When she came back into the kitchen she was frowning.

“Bad news, Vernon,” she said. “Mrs. Figg has broken her leg and can’t take the girl.”

She jerked her head in Trisha’s direction, as if there was any other girl she could be talking about.

Trisha chewed on her lower lip. If she’d needed more confirmation that she was living in a fantasy novel that would have been enough to cinch it for her.

Dudley looked up from where he was unwrapping a gold-plated wrist-watch, a look of comical horror on his round face.

“Now what?”

“We could phone Marge?” suggested Vernon.

“Don’t be silly, Vernon. She hates the girl.”

Petunia said this as though she didn’t also hate ‘the girl’, but Trisha was fine with hypocrisy if it meant she didn’t need to experience Marge Dursley in close quarters.

“What about what’s-her-name? Your friend—Yvette?”

“Yvonne,” Petunia snapped. “She’s on holiday, in Majorca.”

“If you dropped me at the library I could stay there for the day,” suggested Trisha, since she knew exactly how well Petunia would take the suggestion that she stay home alone.

Petunia and Vernon exchanged glances.

Trisha imagined that they were probably weighing the bother of taking her along with them with the instinctive need to deny her any and all small comforts and liberties. Particularly if she had the audacity to request them first.

“Mummy, I don’t want her to come,” Dudley whinged. “She’s a girl. She’ll spoil it!”

“Fine!” Petunia snapped. “The library it is. I’ll give you fare and you can take the bus back. I want you in the door at half-five and not a moment later, girl, am I understood?”

“Yes, Aunt Petunia,” said Trisha.

“Clear these plates!”

Trisha stood up and cleared the table. She bustled around in the kitchen while Dudley opened his last few presents, tidying away the dishes.

Piers Polkiss and his mother showed up just as Dudley was setting aside his last gift—a new game for his computer.

The Dursleys, Piers and Trisha all piled into Vernon’s company car and were forced to listen to Vernon’s complaints about people who drove motorcycles all the way to the nearest public library.

Trisha got out without complaint, and once she was sure that the Dursleys had turned the corner and were out of sight she made her way to the Underground and caught the next train into London.

She’d been thinking about this for a while but if she was going to be stuck in the world of Harry Potter there were a few things that she was going to do differently.

Between the money Petunia had given her and the coins she’d scrounged out of couch cushions and behind desks she had had just enough money to buy a day-pass that would get her to Charring Cross and back to Privet Drive, since she wasn’t sure if the goblins at Gringotts would let her down to Harry’s vault without a key.

Not for the first time she wondered why Dumbledore had a key to a vault that wasn’t his, and reminded herself to ask him if she ever got the chance. The answer was guaranteed to be interesting.

When she got off the train and made her way back up to street level Trisha began to feel a bit anxious about this whole trip.

After all, even though she was living Harry Potter’s life she hadn’t actually done any magic accidental or otherwise. What if she was a squib here in this world because she’d been a muggle in her last one?

That would actually make a pretty strong case for her just being plain crazy.

If she didn’t find the Leaky Cauldron the most responsible thing to do was probably to march herself into the nearest psychiatric facility before she accidentally took someone’s eye out trying to cast ‘spells’ with a pencil or a tree branch.

She was so caught up in her worries that she almost missed it.

But when she back-tracked several blocks and spotted the record shop there it was.

Grubby and tiny and strangely unobtrusive on the cobbled London streets.

The Leaky Cauldron.

Trisha felt her heart flutter in her chest. A trill of anxiety and excitement.

She blew out a quick breath.

“Okay Trish,” she muttered. “You can do this.”

She took a quick peek at her reflection in the glass to make sure the scar was covered by her fringe and slipped into the pub.

It was smoky and dimly lit inside and filled with some of the strangest looking people Trisha had ever had the dubious pleasure of laying eyes on.

Most of them were normal witches and wizards, dressed in robes over suits or old-fashioned dresses.

Trisha didn’t precisely stand out in her hand-me-down sundress and scuffed trainers, but she didn’t precisely blend in either.

Doing her best to act like she belonged Trisha marched up to the bar where a very old and wrinkled man stood supervising as a rag polished already spotless glasses.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, proud when her voice didn’t waver. “Would you be able to open the archway for me?”

The barkeep—Tom, most likely—gave her a quick look.

“Where are your parents, young miss?” he said.

“Erm, dead sir,” Trisha said, as awkwardly as possible. “My aunt and uncle are muggles.”

Tom cleared his throat and jerked his head.

“Back this way then,” he said.

Trisha followed him back into the alleyway behind the pub, and watched him carefully as he tapped out the correct sequence.

“Three up, two across,” she murmured.

The stone of the wall wriggled and shifted until they had formed a stone archway that led onto a side-street, but Trisha could see the way witches and wizards bustled along the main thoroughfare even from here.

“There you go, young miss,” said Tom scratching the back of his head sheepishly.

“Thank you, sir,” said Trisha giving him her brightest smile before slipping past him into Diagon Alley.

 _The_ Diagon Alley.

It was as magical a place as she had always imagined.

The shops were tightly packed together and had a certain old-world charm to them and they were filled to the brim with incredible things.

Trisha spotted Eeylops and Quality Quidditch Supplies and Flourish and Blotts and a dozen other shops the books had never mentioned, and abruptly knew what Harry had meant about wishing he had more eyes. Everyone was bustling about, going about their business or shopping while all around them truly fantastic examples of magic were occurring.

There was hardly a moment where something didn’t move on its own, or float, or flash different colours without prompting.

It was _real_ magic.

The kind that happened so easily. So casually, Trisha couldn’t believe it was fake.

As she watched, a plump witch swished her wand and stowed a small mountain’s worth of shopping bags in her billowing sleeve. A little further down the street, a wizard in grey robes apparated in between one step and the next.

Trisha could have stood there watching for hours, but she had a mission.

Gringotts bank was a building that towered over the squat shops of Diagon Alley.

It was made of white marble, veined with gold and was impossible to miss. Just as well since it was a sunny Saturday and the streets were thick with crowds.

The bronze outer doors of Gringotts stood open, with a goblin posted on either side, uniformed in red and gold.

Both of them bowed when Trisha mounted the stairs into the bank, but neither of them seemed particularly happy about it.

The inner doors were silver, polished to a sheen and inscribed with a familiar verse.

“Enter stranger but take heed…” she recited as the goblin door wardens bowed to her and the silver doors swung wide enough for her to enter.

The hall beyond the doors was filled with milling people and goblins but there didn’t seem to be a queue anywhere so, a bit hesitantly Trisha approached the nearest free goblin sat at the long golden counter.

“Hello,” she said, swallowing thickly. “Would you be able to help me, sir?”

The goblin lifted his—her?—head from where she was bent over a thick ledger and fixed her with a narrow-eyed stare.

“I suppose that will depend on what you need, child,” they said, setting aside a quill as long as their arm.

“Um, yes, my name is Trisha Potter. That is, Patricia Potter, and I was told I have an account at this bank in my name?”

The goblin flicked their dark gaze up, towards her forehead, and then down to her face.

Their expression remained impassive but they arched one thin brow.

“No key?”

“Not that I’m aware of, no,” said Trisha, trying to slow her breathing.

She did not want to be detained by goblins. She was certain of that. They were, objectively, terrifying despite being a full head shorter than herself.

“Hmm,” sniffed the goblin. “Hand.”

Trisha wiped her palm on her skirt as surreptitiously as possible and held out her left hand to the goblin.

They plucked a second quill with a glossy jet-black feather out of a crystal inkwell and handed it to her along with a glossy stone tablet about the size of a paperback.

“Initials.”

There was no ink in the quill that Trisha could see but she looped her usual ‘t’ onto the stone tablet with the point of the quill anyway. There was a sharp stinging in her hand and the letter was drawn out in a dark-glossy red.

A blood-quill, Trisha understood.

Biting at her lower lip she drew the ‘p’ quickly, a little sloppy, and watched as the blood sank into the stone and rippled.

A number appeared.

1296.

The goblin whisked it away from Trisha and she set the blood quill down carefully.

“Your replacement key,” they said, handing over a little brass key. “All other keys have been recalled. Do not lose this one.”

“Of course,” said Trisha, tucking it carefully into the pocket of her dress. “Would I be able to make a withdrawal today?”

The goblin sighed.

“Olfang,” they called.

Another goblin appeared carrying a lantern.

“Follow,” he grunted in a deep gravelly voice.

Olfang was long-fingered and thickly muscled, with a pointed goatee in the same dark color as the hair that had been oiled back from his face.

He led her through one of the doors of the main entranceway and into a low tunnel set with tracks.

Olfang whistled and what could only be described as a mining cart came hurtling towards them.

“In,” he grunted, hanging his lantern off the little hook at the front of the cart.

Trisha took another deep breath and climbed in, clinging tightly to the sides.

“Vault 1296,” Olfang rumbled.

Almost before she was settled the cart surged forward at top speed down the sloping track that led deeper into the bank.

They whipped through a twisting labyrinth of passages at speeds that should have toppled such an unwieldy looking cart. But the cart never slowed. It seemed to know it’s own way because Olfang didn’t direct it, and no matter how much they whipped back and forth neither he nor their lantern was dislodged.

Trisha, who had never been keen on roller coasters or deep dark tunnels that looked like nothing so much as the set for the mines of Moria, felt herself in acute sympathy with Hagrid.

They finally screeched to a stop in front of a small door made of a thick dark grey metal. In the centre of the door under the polished brass vault number was a keyhole.

“Key,” grunted Olfang.

Trisha handed over the tiny brass key she’d been given by the goblin at the front desk and Olfang took it in his long fingers and fit it to the keyhole.

There was a sharp click, and the door swung open with a wash of sparkling green fog.

Olfang handed her a bag of rich green velvet and stood aside to let her through.

It looked like a dragon’s treasure hoard, except all the gold was neatly stacked.

Trisha didn’t know how much she’d need in the grand scheme of things but she scooped enough gold into the bag that she could feel it becoming heavy, reasoning that she really did not want to come back to Gringotts too often.

She tucked the bag and the key into the pocket of her dress where it bulged awkwardly for lack of anywhere better to put it, and then, unable to delay any longer, climbed reluctantly back into the cart for the trip back to the surface.

By the time they emerged back into the tunnel lined with flickering torches Trisha was convinced that Olfang had taken several detours on purpose and she was feeling distinctly wobbly in the knee when she climbed out of the cart.

“Have a pleasant day,” rumbled Olfang, grinning at her with a mouthful of long pointed teeth.

“Thank you, you as well,” Trisha replied automatically, stumbling gratefully into the well-lit main hall.

She almost didn’t queue up to have a few of her galleons converted into muggle pounds, but eventually good-sense won out over discomfort and she joined the line of incongruous people dressed in denims and trainers at the far end of the front desk.

A pretty blond witch with a bright smile, dressed in the same green and gold uniform as the goblins was handling the currency exchange. She was the only human worker in the main hall, though Trisha knew from the books that there were plenty of witches and wizards who worked for Gringotts in one capacity or another.

The currency exchange didn’t take long and the witch at the desk gave her another velvet bag, this one purple, in which to store her muggle money explaining that it was charmed against thieves and could be located by the bank if it was mislaid and not to worry it was covered under her monthly account fees.

Which meant that she had probably been paying a small fortune in bank fees for the vault no one had been using for the last ten years. Still, everything had been very straightforward and she didn’t want to mess anything up for Harry if he ever returned.

She made her way out of the bank and into the sunshine gratefully, fighting the urge to dip her hand into her pocket and check that her purse and key were still there.

Now that she had money, she didn’t know quite what to do with it.

She’d never been exactly flush with cash as either a child or an adult, and when she was there was always a bill to be paid or an expense to be covered.

As a kid she’d always spent money on books. As an adult she mainly indulged herself eating out.

Trisha’s stomach took that moment to remind her that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast and that it was now well past noon.

She took herself over to Fortescue’s since it was close to the bank and had an outdoor patio where she could sit and people watch while she tried to plan her next steps.

She ordered a chocolate ice-cream studded with bits of brownie and walnut and sat down to do just that.

Her morning out had confirmed several things for her.

The first, was that magic existed in this world. The second, was that this child-body belonged to the legitimate spawn of Lily and James Potter. And the third was that this was, for all intents and purposes, her reality for the time being.

She was living in the Harry Potter novel.

If she hadn’t been most of the way sure that this was the case from her weeks with the Dursleys she might have taken it harder, but there was reasonable skepticism and then there was blindly refusing to accept the evidence right under her nose.

She was living the life of the Boy-Who-Lived.

And wasn’t that a thought that would put a reasonable body off their lunch.

Harry Potter had a shitty destiny ahead of him. Had had it since before he was even born. He’d been branded. Marked for death and great deeds and turned into Voldemort’s horcrux all in the same night.

Just in first year Harry had almost been killed outright several times, and had, as everyone so conveniently forgot, used his mother’s blood protection magic and made Quirrell crumble in his grip.

And now it was Trisha who had the lightning bolt scar on her forehead. Trisha who had the immutable destiny.

Trisha very seriously considered getting up and getting another ice-cream to fill the sudden black hole of anxiety that had opened up somewhere in the pit of her stomach. It was the same existential dread that filled her when she thought about finally finishing up her last few courses at uni, graduating and leaving her shitty service job to attempt to move in the real world…except it was also worse. None of the things she’d dreaded in the past were liable to send her marching to her death.

Gods, she was going to have to die in seven years.

She needed a drink.

Surely there was an irresponsible adult around here somewhere who’d give alcohol to an eleven-year-old?

Fuck.

Trisha wasn’t a brave person.

She knew herself well enough to admit that. She preferred to work around her fears rather than through them and had made several very stupid decisions in her life being avoidant. By the same token she had a good idea of what she could expect her life to be like if she tried to ignore the looming shade of the Dark Lord.

Why the hell had she been shoved into the role of _Harry Potter_? Why not a random side-character who was entirely tangential to the plot? Like Hannah Abbot or Daphne Greengrass.

It didn’t make sense.

Trisha massaged at her temples.

“Get your shit together,” she told herself sternly.

So she wasn’t Harry Potter Lite. So what? Harry had made plenty of poor choices and been saved from certain death by luck and the hard work of other people plenty of times.

Trisha might not have been brave, but she loved learning and she was meticulous. It would be nothing to learn more magic then Harry ‘Four Spells’ Potter.

And she had the advantage of knowing the broad strokes of how the wizarding world operated.

She also knew where the horcruxes were hidden and what would be required to destroy them, and a little bit about what sorts of protections were around them.

That was more than even Dumbledore knew at the current moment.

Surely that had to count for something?

Maybe there was a way to move the horcrux out of her body.

In the books it was never mentioned. Trisha had always assumed that Dumbledore didn’t try because it was impossible.

But maybe it wasn’t impossible.

Maybe Dumbledore just hadn’t believed there was a need since he’d set things up to make Harry the Master of Death and believed that doing so would save him.

Whatever Dumbledore did or didn’t believe didn’t really matter though. She was still physically only eleven, and although her brain was intact her brain wasn’t fully developed and her inability to jog her long-term planning centre was both frustrating and terrifying.

She remembered being good at long-term planning. Now she could barely imagine the potential changes and complications spinning out from this little trip to Diagon.

The first change was that she didn’t need an escort to Diagon. She could hide the letter. Send her reply promptly. She could go school shopping as soon as she had a day where she could slip away from Petunia and buy whatever she wanted out from under Hagrid’s censorious gaze. She’d have to break the news to the Dursleys gently so they wouldn’t pitch a fit, but, once she had her wand, she would be able to get around on her own well-enough via the Knight Bus, and wouldn’t have to bother the Dursleys for much.

They’d appreciate that, if only in the privacy of their own minds.

This year she’d have to deal with Quirrell and his attempts to kill her, but it wasn’t likely that he would actually get his hands on the Philosopher’s Stone. If she didn’t go through the trap door and confront him, he’d likely never figure out the riddle of the Mirror of Erised in time to claim the stone.

That would give her about a year to figure out how she was going to destroy the diary and the diadem without burning down the school or confronting a giant, and entirely deadly magical serpent.

She’d need to free Sirius as soon as she could manage it too, capture Wormtail. With Sirius out of prison it would be easy to get at the locket. Then there was only the cup, the snake and the ring and herself to deal with and Voldemort would be as mortal as any other prodigiously talented wizard.

Trisha sighed, shredding her paper napkin into smaller and smaller pieces.

All of that was easier said than done, of course, but so were most things in life.

Trisha swept the detritus of her napkin into her palm and binned it on her way out of Fortescue’s.

She still had about an hour before she needed to start back to Surrey and she wanted to use the time wisely.

She couldn’t buy anything just yet, she wanted to hang on to her last few relatively peaceful months in the Dursley household, but she did arrange for and owl to be made available to her for July 28th from the post office and picked up Flourish and Blotts’ pocket-sized owl order catalogue to drool over.

The train ride back to Surrey was quiet, and Trisha slipped back into the Dursley household at precisely 5:24 to the raucous noise of Piers and Dudley competing at some sort of racing game. 

Trisha hid her money between her mattress and the wall and padded into the kitchen.

“You’re late girl,” snapped Petunia, even though it was only 5:28. “Start the dinner and set an extra place, Piers is staying the night.”

“Yes, Aunt Petunia,” said Trisha, already counting the days until September 1st and freedom.

**Author's Note:**

> I am eager to know what you guys think? Am I jumping in too fast? Are we liking Trisha? Does everything make pseudo-logical sense? What was your favourite part?
> 
> Comments are love!


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